


Tip the Scales

by FreshBrains



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Choking, Community: starwarskinkmeme, Dark, F/M, Moral Dilemmas, POV Rey, Post-Movie(s), Power Dynamics, Strangulation, Telepathy, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is your weakness</i>, she thinks, the effort like a hot brand. Her breath halts almost immediately, air cut off by her lover’s hand. <i>This will not make you stronger</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tip the Scales

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt on the DW Star Wars Kink Meme: [Kylo Ren decides that he has to kill Rey, because his feelings for are the only thing left keeping him weak. She needs to convince him otherwise.](https://starwarskinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/586.html?thread=8010#cmt8010)
> 
> This fic features an unhealthy relationship, but there is no power imbalance. Rey can break hold of Kylo's grip at any time, choosing not to out of her own motivations. They are on 100% equal footing in this fic. Since there is no power imbalance between the partners, despite the violence, I have not tagged this as abuse.

Rey once nursed a carrion bird back to perfect health after a half-dead gnaw-jaw snapped its wing clean off. She hated the carrions—they feasted on the bloated corpses that littered the dunes, caring nothing for the lives left behind, and often tried to steal whatever little meat Rey could scrounge up for herself.

But it was alive, and hurt, and it made _Rey_ hurt.

Then it hobbled off into the desert, one wing shy, never to return to the one who brought it back to life, never even looking back.

Kylo sleeps lightly at night, his mind never truly at rest. When he dozes, his shields drop like a handful of screws, dozens of scattered thoughts left for her to sift through and dissect. Some of them are pleasing (she sees herself through his eyes, sees herself tasting loop pastry for the first time, feeling grass between her toes); some are sad (the light dying in Han’s eyes, the panicked screams of children). Most are not meant to be shared with her.

He wakes, shifting against her bare body in the small bed they share on his compact command shuttle—landed on a marshy backwater planet, it is the only place they can be unseen. His hair falls in a dark curtain over his eyes. “You’re awake,” he says, bleary-eyed. “It’s early.”

She smiles, carding her fingers through his hair. She knows this face now—knows the constellation of moles on his pale skin, knows the troubled curve of his lips, the slant of his brow. She’s kissed every inch of his body, strong and sure, and he’s done the same to her until she was trembling with _something_ , something warm and sweet and dangerous. “You’re thinking,” she says.

He nods. He saves his smiles for the rare occasion, and this is not one of them. “Tell me what you saw.”

She urges him to lie down again, tucking him in the crook of her arm. He acquiesces easily to gentle touches, to sweetness, something she’d never expect. “Me on D’Qar, in the snow. Our lightsabers.” She pauses, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I was in a mask. A black one, like yours.”

“And I was in rags,” he says plainly, knowing his own thoughts just as well.

Rey lets her mind wander, lets Kylo inside her thoughts. She thinks about this man on a desert planet, abandoned by General Organa and Han Solo and his loving uncle, forced to fend for himself. She thinks about licking up his plate of rations. She sees his skin wind-chapped, his mask sand-blasted to its base color. Then, she tries to see herself born on an urban planet, doted on by adoring parents, kissed by aunties and uncles. She imagines what it would’ve been like to grow up as a Jedi youngling, her powers honed and sharpened practically from birth, her face gleaming with pride as her Master teaches her with a steady hand.

She cannot make sense of it.

“I wish,” Kylo begins, voice halting.

“No, you don’t,” Rey says. Because she knows he doesn’t. He doesn’t wish their roles were reversed. He worked hard for his pain, for his anger, for the darkness that festered deep like a wound. “Everything you’ve wished for, you’ve gotten.”

 _Not everything_ , he thinks. “It’s right here,” he whispers, pressing a palm against her sternum, his calloused hand between her breasts. It sends a shiver of arousal through her body, a steady hum of pleasure. “It took root in you. That _anger_ , that betrayal.” His hand crawls up, slow and warm, fingers broad against her clavicle.

She swallows hard, willing her body to be still. “It is not rooted in me. Not like it is in you.” _You planted it yourself_ , she sends him, words too fragile to be said aloud. _Ben_.

This is when it begins. This is when it stops being about bodies, about shared minds and shared heat, about the fact that they know each other’s thoughts as well as they know their own.

His fingers wrap around her neck, thumb pressing into her jaw hard enough to bruise. He _squeezes_.

 _This is your weakness_ , she thinks, the effort like a hot brand. Her breath halts almost immediately, air cut off by her lover’s hand. _This will not make you stronger._

“My power comes from my pain,” he says through gritted teeth. He closes his eyes, won’t even look at her as he grasps at her life. “It _all_ makes me stronger.”

 _When I am gone, you will be alone,_ she thinks. Glittering stars appear in her vision. The Force guides her through it; she’s unafraid. She has faced death before. She doesn’t kick, doesn’t struggle. She clutches the thin blankets in her hands. _You cannot gain power from a void_.

“I cannot feel like this,” he whispers, eyes screwed shut so tight that his face is contorted in a grimace of pain. “It will be my end.” His hand flexes, crushing tighter around her throat. He’s not even using the Force—just his body’s own strength.

 _This is easy_ , Rey thinks, more to herself than to him. She wishes Finn could hear her. She wants to comfort him, let him know that her death will be small in his lifetime, that his true life is just beginning, and it can begin without her. _Dying is easy_.

The hand disappears. Air rushes back into her lungs, scratching like sand in her throat, and she heaves up, coughing, scrambling out of the bed. The floor is cold against her bare hands and knees. As she fights to steady her breathing, she hears the airlock open, hears the splashing of Kylo’s body hitting the marshland, waking himself up from the shock.

The world spins when she stands naked in the airlock entrance, staring out at the wet, dank landscape. “You’re weak,” she spits, voice hoarse. He’s not really weak—he’s afraid. There’s a difference. She’s been battling it her entire life.

But he’s already gone, disappeared into the mossy woods. He’ll be back. He always is. And maybe next time, he’ll leave his hand resting on her sternum, the Force twitching through his fingers, telling him to go back to sleep.

Or maybe next time, she’ll squeeze right back.


End file.
